Other historical points of interest along our tour

Did you know?

Stop 5: The Ten Bells Public House is notoriously connected to Jack the Ripper. Two of the killer's victims were seen close to the pub prior to their untimely deaths. In fact all five victims lived close by.

Stop 5: Nicholas Hawksmoor, who built Christ Church, was a former assistant to Sir Christopher Wren, England’s most acclaimed architect, who designed St Pauls Cathedral.

Stop 6: Artistic duo Gilbert and George work from a house on Fournier Street.

Stop 9: Painter David Hockney held his first exhibition at The Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1970.

Stop 9: Guernica by Pablo Picasso was first displayed outside of continental Europe at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1939.

Stop 9: The Whitechapel Bell Foundry on Whitechapel Road is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest manufacturing company in Britain. Since 1570 the Foundry has cast many famous bells including the Liberty Bell, Big Ben, those at Westminster Abbey and the many London churches commemorated in the Oranges and Lemons nursery rhyme.

Stop 9: Joseph Merrick, AKA the Elephant Man, was treated and lived at the Royal London Hospital on Whitechapel Road until the end of his life. A new replica of his skeleton is on display at the Hospital Museum alongside his hat and mask, photos, and an intricate paper model of a church he made.

Stop 9: Royal London surgeon Thomas Horrocks Openshaw helped police working on the Jack the Ripper case. He forensically analysed the infamous "From Hell" letter written in 1888 by someone claiming to be the serial killer.

Stop 10: The Blind Beggar Pub on Whitechapel Road was the site of a murder in 1966 by one of the East End gangsters, the Kray twins. It now serves lovely cheese boards.

Stop 11: Famous Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw was an early member of the socialist Fabian Society who regularly met on the Whitechapel Road.

Stop 11: Captain James Cook, who explored the Pacific from Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii and Vancouver Island, lived at 88 Mile End Road. A plaque marks the spot where the now-demolished house stood.

Stop 12: The grand building to the left of Genesis Cinema was once the Wickhams Department Store. Built in 1927, it was heralded as the "Harrods of the East End".

Stop 12: Seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys frequented the Mile End Road, according to his famous diary, and his mother was the daughter of a Whitechapel butcher.

Stop 12: Frederick Charrington was one of the last great Victorian philanthropists. Part of a famous brewing family based in Mile End, he renounced his £1m interest in the firm to pursue a crusade against the evils of alcohol. He set up probably the world's first temperance society to support addicts and established an East End mission, feeding the homeless.